Sunday 24 April 2011

New Fund Raising Ideas

     After the resounding success of the piano marathon and funds being raised of about 15% of the total I have now began to organise other fundraising ideas. 
      Other plans for events include a Curry and Karaoke Night with raffle which will hopefully take place sometime in the months of June or July. I hope the event will prove to be fun as well as lucrative for the cause.
     Grass cutting during these months and the rest of the summer is another scheme I wish to pursue. As these fundraising ideas develop I will update the blog and will try and keep you posted about new projects.

More Updates Soon...

Saturday 16 April 2011

The Marathon Is Done!

     At last the 12 hours are over and I've had some time to recover!   

     I'm glad it's over now, despite how much I enjoyed it (in parts at least). My arms/shoulders/neck ache but surprisingly my fingers are in perfecting working order. Still the transition from the piano's keyboard to the computer's is tiring, so I'll be concise. Thanks so much to everyone who has been involved, through the many different media and the large time span since February.

     Now I suppose I'll have to start work for my next fundraising event! I don't think I could gain as much experience as this event: publicising, finding donors, organising technology, and preparing for the 12 hour endurance; it's pushed me outside my comfort zone at times but overall this has been incredibly rewarding and enjoyable. 

     Though for my next event I'm still up for a challenge, it may be some time. I'll keep you posted...

Friday 15 April 2011

Piano Marathon Tomorrow!

     Today sadly we were forced to abandon the camcorder kindly lent to us by Trudi, due to a lack of money, time and will to take apart the desktop, read the motherboard and install a fire-wire card! I hope you still can appreciate the live stream at the bottom of the page, even with the lower quality webcam!

      Don't forget to tune in to BBC Coventry and Warwickshire at about 8.45AM tomorrow! I really appreciate the all the support from the community, with cables being donated, kind messages being left and a general positive attitude towards the whole thing. It really has helped. Now all that's left is to do the marathon, the preparation has been almost as challenging and rewarding as the real thing.

     Thanks once again to everyone who's helped so far.

Wednesday 13 April 2011

More Publicity!

     As you may already know there has been interest by three newspapers in the upcoming piano marathon: The Leamington Courier, The Rugby Advertiser and The Rugby Observer. Well today I was called up by BBC Coventry and Warwickshire Radio 94.8 FM | 103.7 FM. I will have an interview at about 8:45, before the start of the piano marathon. So do tune in.

     In other news we now have an excellent camera kindly lent to us by a friend so the sound and picture quality should be much better than my web cam. However there seem to be technical problems relating to fire wire cables not being able to be plugged into PCs. I hope a trip to town to buy a different cable tomorrow will solve this. I'll keep you posted. 

     P.S: I did get the double ended mini fire wire DV cable, it works, but now we have issues with audio. We hope putting a memory card in it may work since we've tried everything else! 

Monday 11 April 2011

The Regency 10k is Done!

     After so much training for the endurance event of my piano marathon, I somewhat neglected training for the 10k, completely. However I was still quite pleased with myself for completing the run in 55.57 minutes despite the high temperatures. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. 
    
     Thanks to everyone who sponsored and supported me for this event. Maybe next year, with better experience and conditions, I will be able to run it quicker and get more sponsorship.

     I hope you're all still looking forward to the Piano Marathon this Saturday, I certainly am. Once again I am very appreciative of all the support from so many people in these last few months. I just hope I'll manage to pull it off, there's lots of practice still to do in four days!

Wednesday 6 April 2011

It's All About Cameras!

This week is all about cameras! 
     
     Firstly, today a photographer from the Leamington Courier came round and took a picture of me at the piano. After that I had a telephone interview with one of their journalists. Hopefully it will be published in the paper this week, but it's not too great a shame if it is in next week's edition.
     
     Secondly, as you probably will have noticed, there is a YouTube upload below (removed temporarily due to marathon), as I said last Wednesday. I decided to use an old video from December (hence the fleece), but I still think it's all right. Anyway I don't have too much time to try and record another at the moment, but I'll see what I can do.

   

     Lastly, my camera was used to take a photo for the Rugby Advertiser today as well. I'm not sure when they will be publishing the article, but I'll keep you posted.